In May this year, the government launched a consultation on the potential sub-division of planning application categories. Up to now, full planning applications fell into one of two classifications: minor, and major, with the threshold for those schemes falling into one or the other being the net addition of 10 homes. Any less than this, you’d be a minor application; any more, a major—regardless of whether this involved the creation of 10 homes or 1,000. This has consequences in the level of information required to validate the application and the time taken to determine it: minor applications should receive an outcome in no more than eight weeks from the point of validation, but for major schemes this rises to 13 (although very few applications are ever actually determined within this period).
The proposed bands retain the minor category at between 1 and 9 inclusive, but introduces a new medium definition of between 10 and 49 homes, with the major classification now including those schemes yielding more than 50 dwellings.
This makes a lot of sense, although perhaps it doesn’t go far enough. Applications for 50 homes should not be treated in the same way as those for 500, so there should be a further division of the major application type, probably around the 250-home mark.
But what about at the smaller scale? SME developers are likely to be the ones building the majority of homes within the minor category, but community builders, councils and housing associations also have a part to play. But what about those new homes for private clients; the boutique developers who have managed to acquire a tiny scrap of land in a fashionable area, or the families who want to carve out a sliver of their back garden in order to build a home for their kids? Single family homes are an opportunity for creativity and innovation, as well as being a vital tool in our attempt to intensify our towns and cities. Many well-known architects have cut their teeth on crafty infill projects that squeeze delightful and spacious homes on the most constrained urban sites.
He Lives in a House, a Very Big House
The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) has, for some time, included a clause which allows new homes to be built in the countryside provided that certain criteria are met. The most recent iteration of the NPPF encapsulates this objective in paragraph 84, which states that “…decisions should avoid the development of isolated homes in the countryside unless one or more of the following circumstances apply:”
e) the design is of exceptional quality, in that it:
Extract from paragraph 84, National Planning Policy Framework, December 2025
i. is truly outstanding, reflecting the highest standards in architecture, and would help to raise standards of design more generally in rural areas; and
ii. would significantly enhance its immediate setting, and be sensitive to the defining characteristics of the local area.
This is great for wealthy actors, hedge fund managers and oligarchs, but why should they have all the fun?
I think it’s time to introduce a similar policy to allow the development of single homes in urban areas, free from the many restrictive planning constraints which consistently make small-scale development costly and unpredictable. In keeping with the alliterative minor/medium/major naming convention, we need a new category: micro.
Micro Scope
Here’s my proposal:
Within urban and suburban areas, but outside conservation areas and not within the curtilage of a statutorily listed building, it should be possible to build a new house with automatic planning permission, provided that the external volume of the house fits within a set of maximum parameters determined by the outlook of neighbouring windows and private amenity space. Applications must demonstrate only how they respond to a) flood risk, b) highways and transport requirements, c) waste and recycling provision, and d) risk of contamination.
The dimensional parameters might include the following limitations:
- The development must comprise a single dwellinghouse on a plot no larger than 200sqm;
- The development volume must be no taller than the highest part of an immediate neighbour;
- The development volume must be no closer to the highway than the principal elevation of an immediate neighbour;
- The development volume must not extend beyond a 45% line drawn in a horizontal plane from the nearest jamb of any primary window serving any habitable room;
- The new dwelling must be no closer to the site boundary than the neighbouring dwelling is;
- The distance between the principal window serving a habitable room in the new development must be no closer than 16m from that of a principal window serving a habitable room within a neighbouring dwellinghouse.
This is how these policies might appear in three dimensions, using a street infill site type:
External appearance should be entirely down to the applicant: local character does not have to be “adhered to” or “respected”. I have no say in the colour or model of the car my neighbour chooses to park outside the front of their house; nor should they have a say in what I want my home to look like.
Building Regulations compliance is distinct from planning, so each home delivered this way will need to confirm to minimum levels of structural integrity and feature basic amenities, such as a toilet. It’s unlikely a mortgage lender is going to let self-builders create anything too outlandish.
Beyond these constraints, there should be no requirement to adhere to local planning policies, including space standards. You want to create a voluminous home consisting of a single room? No problem.
Not every site will allow a house to be built using these parameters, but then there’s always the normal planning route to fall back on.
Be Careful What You Wish For
Of course, there’s a risk that such a permissive policy could result in some dreadful interventions, but on the other hand, it could also unleash a wave of creative and extraordinary homes to meet a range of different needs. And can we really say that the planning policies of the last century has allowed only buildings of exceptional quality to be built? I don’t think so.
Existing planning policies are necessarily prescriptive to ensure that rogue developers don’t throw together exploitative shoeboxes that can’t meet the basic standards necessary for a comfortable existence, but these requirements also assume that everyone neatly slots into a conventional family unit. What about the extended multi-generational families; co-habiting friends happy to share a living room, but not a bathroom; or the retired couple who don’t need the space afforded by their large family home, but who have a lifetime of possessions that can’t be squeezed into a one-bed flat?
Giving almost complete flexibility to design an entirely bespoke houses—free from planning conventions and context—would allow families to create homes to suit their specific needs, and encourage architects to come up with innovative ways to craft extraordinary homes from the most unlikely of plots: witness the brilliance of the Japanese “jutaku” houses which exploit tiny urban sites to deliver some of the world’s most striking architecture. This would have the added benefit of adding new layers of interest and surprise into otherwise homogenous residential neighbourhoods.
There are risks, of course: many planning applications are already of extremely low quality, with scant attention paid to even the most basic tenets of good design. But this, I think, is a risk worth taking. Any damage would be limited, and local.
What policy levers might be pulled to achieve it? There are several options. The first might be the use of a National Development Management Policy (NDMP). An NDMP allows the government to establish a nationwide planning policy that overrides local plans, although planning permission would need to be sought in the usual way. A second route is through a new class of permitted development within the GDPO (General Permitted Development Order). This would allow homes to be built without the need to secure planning permission, instead seeking “prior approval” to ensure that (for example) the new home considers flood risk, contamination, impact on transport and highways, and the means through which to dispose of waste and recycling. Beyond that, anything goes. The latter option would be the most credible, but the most controversial too.
The dream of designing and building one’s own home should not be out of the reach of ordinary people, and at the same time we desperately need to fill the forgotten gaps and vacant plots of our cities with as many homes as we can. Single family houses provide an opportunity for innovation and the possibility of people owning a home that is designed specifically for their needs. We should let them get on with it.